Dragonship 7 RC Rocket Glider

Here's another that I've been mulling over in my head, converting the original rocket design into an RC rocket glider. This design was an Estes rocket themed in 1950's -ish flash gordon/Buck Rogers sci-fi style that was supposed to be a galactic pirate ship with a dragon theme. I used 2.6" lightweight tubing, 23.5" wingspan, 34" length, 11 oz rtf with rocket motor. It's got 235 sq inches of wing.

I built the cockpit box out of depron, as are the vertical stabs, and the wing is MPF with a single 1/8"spar with elevons. I played with openrocket to evaluate the lateral stability with the forward vertical stab and determined the placement to give me margin, then adjusted the wing shape and location to minimize nose weight needed. The cockpit is just an opened bottom box that I then sanded to contour using sandpaper over the body tube. Then I cut the notch in the forward vertical fin to fit the height of the box. Vertical stab goes through the rear of the wing and body and has a notch for the motor tube, and the motor tube has some locating strips on either side to center it laterally.

I like steampunk things, but not enough to build them myself, but this sort of has that feel. I left it white because the original markings tend to pop more than when on gray/silver. I hand cut the vinyl in red and then used black strips to make the dragon wing accents. For rivets, I make a 12" strip of milk jug plastic and make holes every 1/4" using a leather hole punch as a guide. I simply layed the strip around the fuse, or along the wing next to a straight edge and used a fine line sharpie to make little circles in each hole, went pretty quickly, about 20-30 minutes for several hundred rivets. It added a lot and make it look more steam-punkish.